At the junior level, the collisions are not large enough to warrant the same concern about serious concussion we see in the professional game.

No 12-year-old is putting in the kind of hits Maro Itoje or Sonny Bill Williams does - they simply don't have the size, strength or speed.

But without learning how to tackle properly - low, with your head out of the way of the other player's thighs - once they do gain the mass to do some serious damage, they won't know what they're doing.

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Instead, they will go flying in, not necessarily high but perhaps with their heads on the wrong side, posing more of a risk to themselves than their would-be victims.

Because it takes time to learn how to tackle properly, as with any skill, and that is what you're doing when you play rugby at school. You are learning how to do things properly, and in a situation where the potential for serious injury, while still present, is much less than it would be if you took to the field for the first time as an adult.

Without learning the basics as an 11-year-old at school, I am certain I would have been much more of a danger to myself and others once I started playing men's rugby seven years later.

I have no doubt Prof Allyson Pollock and Graham Kirkwood had children's best interests at heart when they called for a ban on tackling in schools, but the long-term impact would be more concussions in the adult game.

Banning tackling in schools rugby would be an extreme reaction to a small problem (Image: Surrey Advertiser)

Banning tackling outright would also be grossly disproportionate to the problem at hand.

As their own statistics show , more than 99% of tackles in schools rugby are completed safely, and there is nothing to suggest those that do result in a head injury have a serious impact later in life.

So while it may be tempting for Prof Pollock to see schools cruelly forcing children to put themselves in harm's way in the interests of "corporate professional rugby unions" - whatever those interests are - nothing could be further from the truth.

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By all means, junior rugby should meet the same safety standards as adult rugby when it comes to head injuries.

Children need to be taught how to tackle safely, otherwise they risk more serious injury in the adult game (Image: UCG TMS)

Children should not be rushed back into playing after suffering a concussion, and rules on high tackles and other types of dangerous play should be strictly enforced.

And perhaps schools should consider requiring children to wear scrum caps while playing rugby, providing them with a measure of added protection (as is the case in some Australian schools).

But to remove an essential element of the game would disadvantage children should they wish to continue playing in the future and thus jeopardise their safety over a problem that affects less than 1% of cases.

I can see no reason to leap to such an extreme measure - but then maybe I've taken too many blows to the head.

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